Mad At Him Forever
by Eve Davidson
Summary: season 3, after Craig cheats on her and she finds out, Ashley commits suicide.  Craig is left to deal with the aftermath of a death that he thinks is his fault.
1. Chapter 1

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Ashley

She'd never felt pain like that, breathtaking almost physical pain, like a punch in the stomach. Psychic pain. Physical pain would almost be better, it would be something she could wrap her mind around. Not like this aimless breathless ennui water level ache. Damn him. Damn him.

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Craig

The girls, both those girls, it had been too much for him. Well, it had all blown up in his face and a merry Christmas to him. Still, he wondered why he cheated on Ashley when he knew it was wrong. Felt it in his bones even as he was doing it. Was it because cheating on her was easier than facing his emotions? Was it because it was easier than saying no to Manny? He liked Manny but with Ashley, it was something more. It was something so much more that he was a little bit terrified. He couldn't tell her. That song he had wrote for her, that song was an excuse not to tell her, not to really tell her, that he loved her.

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Ashley

The constant ache of wanting him, needing him, and the overwhelming knowledge of what he had done, it was wearing her down. The inside of her mind was a dark red screaming place. A screaming place. He was gone and love was gone and something screamed it over and over. Little naked terrified girl in her mind, in her screaming place with the red walls and the blood that she could see as it traveled in its little sacs, little veins and capillaries and all those things shuffling off the blood to her heart that didn't want to beat anymore.

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Craig

Joey smirked at him, amused at his screwed up love life. Or absence of one now. You can't have the cake and eat it, too, or something like that. Craig sighed, watched a lot of T.V., tried not to feel so miserable but it was hard. Screwed up again. Nothing new. Par for the course. Sometimes he liked to blame Manny. She came onto him. She danced up against him so sexy at that rave and she hung around him at school and she, with her sexy little clothes and sweet baby voice, she made him do it. But that was a cheap way out. Manny wasn't some temptress and he was some helpless boy. He chose to cheat. He did it freely. It wasn't fair to blame Manny.

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Ashley

Beyond tears now. All cried out now. She felt like a shell, just an outside, her insides all burned away.

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Craig

Maybe Ashley would take him back, if he apologized. If he could get in her good graces again. He thought about her dumping him, those blue eyes swimming with tears, her nose all crinkled up like it got when she was angry. "How could you?" she said to him, and he'd just stood there. What could he have said? What were the magic words to make it all better? The truth was there were none.

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Ashley

Craig's dad had beat him, she knew that. Used to feel so sorry for him, and she'd picked up on it when they did that little play last year, "Taming the Shrew". Craig wasn't exactly acting when he shoved her to the floor of the stage, the anger in his voice and in his eyes real. She'd seen his dad at the school and realized that Craig had dressed up as him, the glasses and the suit and all of it. And she knew the dead mother and the abusive father had something to do with why he couldn't say he loved her even if he did. But still she'd pushed him to say it, she'd pushed him away.

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Craig

School was becoming an ordeal. Ashley was absent a lot but when she was there her eyes shot little daggers at him and she walked in a wide circle around him if they had to pass in the halls and her friends all gave him dirty looks and whispered behind their hands. Everyday was like this Ashley land mine and if he didn't watch where he stepped he'd get blown up.

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Ashley

Laying on her bed the waves of that darkness pulling her under, pulling her into her own mind with a force that was hard to fight. Everything ached, her nerves were singing with it. It was beating her. She called out to Craig in her mind but he didn't hear her, he was deaf. It was pain but she didn't know how to describe it. Pulsing. Numbness. Coldness. Jabbing stabbing pounding. All those things and a thousand more. Little rodents with teeth. Dentist drills. Migraines. She started asking for help but she didn't know from who. It was a dead voice in an empty room. Maybe she was asking God. Maybe she was asking Craig. Both were as inaccessible.

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Craig

It would be okay. It had to be. She couldn't stay mad at him forever, could she? She'd thaw. She'd let it go and see that it was a mistake and let him in again. Into her life. Into her heart. And maybe when she did he'd have the courage to tell her how he felt.

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Ashley

They wanted her to eat but she didn't want to eat. She didn't want to move. She wanted Craig. She loved him despite what he had done. She loved him. And he had ripped apart her trust, he had destroyed what was good in her, he had left her alone. She opened her eyes, saw the sun fading outside, just an orange line on the horizon now. That's all it was. No one was home now. She could sense the emptiness of the house. Down the hall to the bathroom where Toby's dad kept his razors. She took one back to her room and locked the door. It gleamed in the last of the orange sunset light, and she rolled up her sleeve.

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Ashley

The vertical slashes with the razor didn't hurt at all, and the blood welled up so red, so dark red like magic on her white arm. Like magic.

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Ashley

It didn't hurt as the blood splashed to the floor and the light faded from the sky and from her eyes, and the blood leaving her body in such gushes made her feel light headed, almost high, and her thoughts turned funny, lighter. Like they were unburdened by the lack of blood, the pain no longer coloring her thoughts and they were free to be what they wanted to be. Free. Craig was fading, the pain he had caused was fading, and it was harder and harder to keep her eyes open. She could no longer make sense of the blood splattered room or the dark sky or even herself.

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Ashley

Lying on the floor, her hair soaked in her own blood, blue eyes open again and staring at nothing, into nothing. The ticking clock in her room on the shelf was the last sound she heard, and she thought it was the sound of her own heart.

Now there was only Craig.


	2. Chapter 2

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Craig

Craig didn't hear the knock on the door, but he heard Joey calling to him.

"Craig! You've got company!"

He had been in his room, trying not to think about things. Trying not to feel like shit about Manny and Ashley. Not succeeding.

Down the stairs, half hoping it was one of the girls willing to give him a second chance.

"J.T.?" It was J.T. alright, standing on the snow covered stoop, his longish hair covered by a wool cap.

"Craig, can I come in?" Craig always thought J.T. said his name weird, the a sound all flattened out.

"Uh, yeah. Sure," He stepped aside so J.T. could come in. He stamped the snow from his boots on the thick mat b y the door for that purpose.

It was weird, J.T. being here. He hadn't really talked to him since Spike and Snake's wedding, had no real reason to talk to him.

"Listen, I have to tell you something," J.T. said, but looked around at Joey and Angela and then back at Craig, and his look said he couldn't tell whatever it was in front of them. Angela was all bundled up in a sweater, she was coloring, kneeling down in front of the coffee table. There was a mug of hot chocolate by her hand, the whip cream all melted away. Joey was looking at bills on the kitchen table.

"Let's go up to my room," Craig said, and headed up. J.T. followed, shrugged out of his heavy winter coat and hung it on the post of Craig's bed.

Craig waited, lips pressed together, glancing outside, everything covered in that blue white snow, a hard glaze of it over everything. J.T. took some deep breaths, touched the cases of the CD's that were scattered on the top of his bureau. He licked his lips, paced a little, wouldn't look at him.

"J.T., what is it?"

"Okay. Listen. You better sit,"

"What? Why?" Craig's tone was sliding toward anger.

"Because it's bad news. So sit,"

He sat down hard on the bed, his patience wearing thin. J.T. was a dorky freshman, and he'd had to deal with him enough at Ashley's hanging out with her dorky step-brother.

"I don't know how to tell you this,"

"Jesus, J.T., just tell me,"

"Okay. It's about Ashley. Last night she, she-"

Craig waited, getting nervous. J.T.'s somber tone making him nervous. He cleared his throat.

"Okay, Craig. Ashley killed herself last night," he said it like it was poison and he had to get the words out fast.

"What? What do you mean?" Craig's eyes were wide, his voice soft, the same way he sounded when Joey told him his father didn't make it.

"She killed herself. She slit her wrists when nobody was home, and by the time they got there it was too late,"

There was nothing to say. There was nothing he could say. J.T. had been right about sitting, he might have fell to the floor. He felt light headed.

J.T. was still standing, still running the pad of his index finger over the smooth surfaces of his CD cases, and still talking.

"Toby found her, I mean, he said the room looked like a slaughter house, and he was like literally frozen for 10 minutes, just staring at the whole mess. They had to give Kate some drugs, she's hysterical. She might even be in a hospital, I don't know. Toby said she freaked out pretty bad, and who wouldn't?"

J.T. kept talking but Craig couldn't really hear him. His lips were moving without sound. Just like when his father died, Joey talking with the volume on mute, and Craig just shaking his head.

Why did people keep dying on him? He swallowed hard, looked at J.T. and his colorless light brown hair, wavy now that it was longer. Everyone died on him, his mother, father, now Ashley?

But Ashley, this suicide, it seemed pretty clear that he was to blame.


End file.
